Posts Tagged ‘executions’

On 13 February 2018 fourteen international and regional rights organizations stated that the Egyptian government has trampled over even the minimum requirements for free and fair presidential elections (planned 26-28 March). The government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has relentlessly stifled basic freedoms and arrested potential candidates and rounded up their supporters. “Egypt’s allies should speak out publicly now to denounce these farcical elections, rather than continue with largely unquestioning support for a government presiding over the country’s worst human rights crisis in decades,” the groups said.

The authorities have successively eliminated key challengers who announced their intention to run for president….The current atmosphere of retaliation against dissenting voices and the increasing crackdown against human rights defenders and independent rights organizations have made effective monitoring of the elections extremely difficult for domestic and foreign organizations. Media reports have said that the number of organizations that were granted permission to monitor the elections was 44 percent fewer than in the last presidential election in 2014 and that the number of requests, in general, has gone down. Several opposition parties called for boycotting the elections. A day later al-Sisi threatened to use force, including the army, against those who undermine “Egypt’s stability and security.” On February 6, the Prosecutor-General’s Office ordered an investigation against 13 of the leading opposition figures who called for a boycott, accusing them of calling for “overthrowing the ruling regime.” “Seven years after Egypt’s 2011 uprising, the government has made a mockery of the basic rights for which protesters fought,” the groups said. “Egypt’s government claims to be in a ‘democratic transition’ but move further away with every election.”

So, the two side events that are coming up are extremely valuable as the national space for dissent is nihil:

The Situation of Human Rights and Upcoming Elections in Egypt: Facilitating Radicalisation is an event organised by the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) and co-sponsored by ISHR, that will take place on 9 March at 13:30 to 15:00 in Room XXIII. The event will address the deterioration of the human rights situation in Egypt and the dangers of the international community’s failure to respond.

Human rights violations in Egypt and in the Gulf States is an event organised by FIDH, CIVICUS, the Gulf Center for Human Rights. It will take place on 15 March 2018 at 15:00 till 16:00 in Room XXIII. The event will focus on the interlinked plight of human rights defenders in Egypt and the Gulf States as both are facing ongoing targeting by their own governments as well as explore measures for coordination and advocacy at the international level.

In the same context there is the press release of Friday 2 February 2018 in which a number of organisations, under the umbrella Committee for Justice (CFJ), condemned Tuesday’s execution of Egyptian Tayseer Odeh Suleiman after he was convicted in Ismalia’s military court in what they said was a flawed trial inconsistent with international legal and human rights standards. Suleiman, 25, was hanged after the Supreme Military Court of Appeals rejected the defence put foward by his lawyer without explaining the reasons behind the rejection….CFJ confirmed that there had been an unprecedented increase in the implementation of death sentences in Egypt, based on illegal proceedings, with 26 people executed between the end of December last year and the present. CFJ further asserted that the reason for the death penalties “under the guise of combating terrorism” were misleading and in violation of basic standards of a fair trial indicating significant flaws in Egypt’s judicial process.

On only a few days ago (2 March 2018), responding to reports from his family and colleagues that Ezzat Ghonim – a prominent Egyptian human rights lawyer and director of the NGO, Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms – failed to return home from work yesterday, Najia Bounaim, Amnesty International’s North Africa Campaigns Director, said: “Given the highly-charged political climate in Egypt and the clampdown on dissent in the lead-up to the presidential elections, we are deeply concerned that Ezzat Ghonim may have been forcibly disappeared. ”

Two Bahrainis appear to be at imminent risk of execution despite the authorities’ failure to properly investigate their allegations of torture. Both Mohamed Ramadan and Husain Ali Moosa have disavowed confessions that they allege were the result of torture and that were used as evidence in a trial that violated international due process standards.

The January 15, 2017 executions of three other Bahrainis in a similar case have raised concerns that King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa will approve the executions of Ramadan and Moosa, who face the death penalty for a February 2014 bombing that resulted in the death of a policeman. Human Rights Watch analysis of their trial and appeal judgments found that their convictions were based almost exclusively on their confessions, which both men retracted.

A huge social media campaign was mounted on behalf of Imam Baba Leigh during his incarceration [Twitter].

“Just a few days ago, on 22 October, I was given an award from the Pan-African Human Rights Defenders Network. I was not expecting it, which makes me all the more happy and appreciative. Sadly, I was not allowed to go and receive it in my home country, The Gambia, because there was a chance I could be arrested there. My responsibility, as a Muslim and as a scholar, is to ensure people enjoy their human rights, regardless of colour, race, gender, religion, tradition, economic status or anything else. We are all human beings at the end of the day. As a human rights activist receiving such a prestigious award is wonderful. You feel your work is recognised and encouraged.

Problems for me started when, in August 2012, our head of state President Jammeh promised to execute several inmates. So I went to talk to The Standard newspaper and urged the President to forgive them. “Forgiveness is part of faith and they are no longer a threat to the security of the nation,” I said quoting the holy Qur’an. A week after the executions, the Islamic Council of The Gambia made a declaration that the executions were Islamic. I gave a Friday sermon at the mosque and replied the executions had nothing to do with Islam. They were un-Islamic. Even though the holy Qur’an mentions executions, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) valued forgiveness. My comments caused a lot of commotion. The newspaper was shut down. I started receiving intimidating calls…

On 3 December, I was arriving home after a funeral when I found two men from the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) there waiting for me. “You are wanted [at the NIA offices] to answer some questions,” they said…I was then put in a jail until around 1.00am. Then they started beating, hitting and kicking me. For nine days I suffered a lot. You never know how important and valuable freedom is until it is taken from you. I used to struggle trying to get people out of jail. Trying to bring peace. Trying to bring peaceful coexistence. I didn’t know this is the way things are until the day I was detained. You can understand ending up in prison if you commit a crime, if you are taken to a judge and sentenced. At least then you would know why you are being held, and for how long. I was abducted and then held incommunicado – I couldn’t see anybody, I couldn’t hear anybody.

I had not committed any crime and my conscience was clean. After nine days, they told me I was going home and they put me in another car. The man taking me said “we are taking you home”, but they drove to a hidden place called Bambadinka, which means “hole of dragons”. There I was put in a very small, very filthy, dirty room. I spent five months there. I was kept in a dark, small room where I couldn’t see or hear anything, only rats and spiders. After five months and 17 days, I was released. Some people say that I am now free. But this is not freedom. Freedom is to be able to go home when you want to. I’m just in a bigger jail.

My ambition is to speak for those who have no pulpit, no opportunity for themselves. And to pass the peaceful message of Islam and other religions. I’m urging people in position of authority, presidents and kings alike, to embrace the freedom of their people and to protect it. You can be a president today, you can be a leader today, you can be an authority today, but things change very quickly. You can find yourself fall from the presidency into prison. Then you will need the work of Amnesty International.”

[Imam Baba Leigh is currently in the USA where he has been receiving medical treatment]

In this excellent blog post, R0ya Boroumand shows the statement by Sadeq Larijani – Head of the Judiciary and Iran official spokesperson on human rights – to be nonsense. Even more she reflects how the death of her own father (stabbed to death in Paris in 1991) has motivated her to continue documenting human rights violations in Iran. And she draws the conclusion that it must have helped:

“Perhaps Larijani’s denial of political executions is not meant for the Iranian people or the human rights community, but rather for a poorly informed and supportive constituency outside Iran that is too willing to accept the Islamic Republic’s habit of blaming others for its shortcomings. But we should appreciate Larijani’s unease, even if it is expressed in the form of a blatant lie. The fact that the number of reported executions in Iran has been trending downward — from 817 in 2010 and 652 in 2011 to 385 so far in 2012 — may well have to do with the active presence and reporting of the UN special rapporteurs and others who are focused on safeguarding human rights.

Through my work toward documenting the stories of all the Islamic Republic’s victims, I have found the best answers I can to the questions that obsessed in 1991. I have also found some relief from the consuming anguish and frustration that decades of untold stories and anonymous suffering by thousands of victims and victims’ loved ones have brought in their train.

The painstaking task of documenting thousands of executions to which my colleagues and I have devoted our lives for the past ten years, added to the efforts of other human rights organizations, has helped to protect people who dare to speak up. Perhaps, and in spite of the limited means at our disposal, we have made the regime worry that if it kills them they will not be forgotten, and so stayed the executioner’s hand. Larijani’s absurd claim that “there are absolutely no political executions in Iran” did not make me smile, but it did reinforce my conviction that truth telling is the most effective tool we have to make tyrants uneasy and slower to unleash their violence.”